–This article was last updated on 5 October 2021-
Spring is now finally setting in, trees are flowering and the cold, bleak winter is starting to feel like a thing of the past. For many, spring symbolises a time to get households in order and organise oneself. This notion of ‘out with the old and in with the new’ does not have to solely be applied to your personal life, it can also be easily adapted to your business.
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Springtime is arguably the best time to change the current processes within your business. With a new tax year fast approaching your finance team is madly working away trying to get everything submitted to HMRC. As the new tax year begins, no time could be better suited to change. This is the time to take a long, hard look at your financial processes and see where improvements can be made with minimal disruption.
If you want to give your business a spring clean then often the best place to make improvements is the areas with the most manual processes. This is for two main reasons: Manual processes are inherently time-consuming and also tend to be error prone. Overly repetitive tasks are not very stimulating for a ‘happy’ workforce and people have a tendency to ‘tune off’, leading to unspotted mistakes. Automation is the key to solving this problem.
These overly manual processes are easy to spot. They are often the ones involving a lot of spreadsheets and paper. These jack-of-all-trades tools may be convenient but they are costing you time and ultimately money. Tailor made software is available for a wide range of financial processes, from bookkeeping to expense management.
Implementing software that is able to automate your finance team’s processes will be instrumental in providing a smoother and less hectic financial year for your employees. Automating lengthy processes will free up considerable time and will allow your finance team to focus on more meaningful tasks.
One area, in particular, that is moving to an online platform is expense management. Software such as ExpenseIn is getting rid of manual expense handling and data input. In its place are cloud solutions designed to automate policy reinforcement and digitalise receipts. Employing this level of control within your finance department ensures that errors are reduced, reimbursement time is sped up and your finance team are no longer drowning in a sea of paper.
There is no better time than the present to utilise software that boosts efficiency and streamlines processes.
